As you may or may not know, scientists don’t just get money for research given to them by federal or state governments, agencies, or universities. We have to write proposals and submit them for review whenever there is funding available. Only the best proposals get funded, and the odds of getting your proposal funded for any given opportunity is <10% (usually somewhere between 2 – 5% get funded, depending on the funding source and competition). I though I’d post my NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant that was successfully funded (on the first try!) for anyone who wants to to see. This is in keeping with a new philosophy of science transparency, and there are some excellent lists of publicly available grant proposals. Hopefully, this helps you understand what goes into the beginnings of a research project, after all, no research is possible without funding, and getting funding isn’t easy. If you’re applying to one of these grants, hopefully you find this and can look it over to see what successful DDIG grants look like.

Thanks so much for sharing your experience. I am a doctoral student studying inter-organizational collaboration at the Univ. of Georgia. I recently heard about the grant and decided to apply for one in Sociology program in NSF. Your proposal looks perfect! Good luck to your academic journey and hope to see you in the future!